Columbus schools: Suit filed over data scrubbing

Columbus school attendance scandal

Columbus City Schools employees -- and perhaps others in schools throughout the state -- are accused of falsifying students' records to improve their schools' standing on state report cards. Read the complete series.

Columbus schools cheated students out of a solid education by inflating school-performance data, says a father who filed a class-action lawsuit against the district and its leaders yesterday.

Parents believed their children’s schools had improved, but they hadn’t because administrators “scrubbed” data to make them look better, the suit alleges. It says state report cards need to be recalculated for those schools and that affected students are entitled to remedial education at the expense of the district.

“The worst-case scenario in these cases is you have parents who sent their kids to what they believed to be great schools that were, in fact, poor schools,” said John P. Sherrod, special counsel at Columbus-based Mills, Mills, Fiely & Lucas. He filed the suit on behalf of Marvin Perkins, whose son Markel Perkins is a former Medina Middle School student.

“Mr. Perkins is extremely passionate about this issue, he’s extremely upset about this issue. He’s upset about what happened to his son.”

The lawsuit asks a judge to force Columbus to stop altering data so that parents can have an honest account of how schools are doing. The suit, filed in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, also seeks money — at least $25,000, with an actual amount to be determined at trial — possibly to pay for tutoring or other needs caused by the district’s “reckless disregard” for the consequences to children of manipulating data. It names the district, school board and Superintendent Gene Harris.

Perkins isn’t trying to make money, Sherrod said; he wants to know the truth about the quality of education his son received at Medina and get help for his son, if needed.

Markel goes to Centennial High School now, but Medina is one of 10 Columbus middle schools that the state auditor has found withdrew students without lawful reason. Because they had been withdrawn, those students’ test scores were wiped from report-card calculations. It’s possible that removing those students drove up overall test scores and, in turn, schools’ report-card standings higher than they otherwise would have been.

A final report of the auditor’s investigation hasn’t been released, but Auditor Dave Yost has said it’s clear that several Columbus schools manipulated student data, possibly to improve their report-card standing.

Harris has questioned the auditor’s findings and said there’s no evidence that changes were made in an attempt to boost ratings. District officials would not comment on the lawsuit yesterday, saying they hadn’t seen it.

The district, board and superintendent “knowingly, recklessly and wantonly misrepresented” to children and parents that students “will be highly educated, prepared for leadership and services” in Columbus schools because they allowed low-performing schools to falsely inflate their report cards, the suit says.

It also points out that some students likely missed out on private-school vouchers because of the inflated ratings.

The issue of manipulating student data is the focus of several investigations. In addition to the state auditor, who is examining schools statewide and, separately, manipulation in Columbus, the district’s internal auditor has been probing the matter for more than a year. The FBI also is investigating student-data accountability in Columbus.

But yesterday’s lawsuit marks the first legal action taken to specifically address the impact of scrubbing. And although other parents have demanded that Columbus schools’ report cards be recalculated, this is the first time a parent has asked a judge to compel it.

The Ohio Department of Education has said it will recalculate school report cards if the state auditor finds it’s necessary.